17 People Describe Their Hair-Raising Real-Life Experiences With UFOs
1. We turn a corner in our neighborhood and there’s this huge black blimp-shaped thing in the sky. Like the pictures of the Hindenburg but bigger than that and as close if not closer.
“First time I ever tried to write this down, first time telling anyone outside the family. I’m leaving out time and location and some other details because I’m still scared of what might happen with it publicly, I guess. Summer before 8th grade, me and two of my friends snuck out at midnight to go walk around the neighborhood and go see these girls on the next block who were having a sleepover. We turn a corner in our neighborhood and there’s this huge black blimp-shaped thing in the sky. Like the pictures of the Hindenburg but bigger than that and as close if not closer. Completely silent and the size of at least four to five football fields across, no exaggeration, even though I was young. We stare at it entranced, asking each other over and over again if we see it, which we all agree that we do, standing there, frozen in one place. It’s like black polished gunmetal, no lights, no sound, no anything. It’s just hovering there. And then I don’t know what happened but time clearly jumps. Next thing I remember is the craft/ship/government experiment/whatever the hell it is has gone and there’s a tiny glowing white barbell thing in the sky, seemingly slowly falling to earth with wisps of smoke coming off it. Then two brand-new black trucks with silver gearboxes on the back, like f150s or s10’s but nicer came speeding down the street, going about seventy in a residential 25MPH neighborhood. Then after that I remember walking home to one of my friend’s houses and going to bed. At that point, it was like 5 or 6 AM and the sun was coming up. We all made a promise to tell my dad in the morning because he worked for the city, but we never did. I don’t know what happened later in life to one of my friends who was there but the other was my best friend and we sort of made an unspoken pact never to talk about it; don’t know how or why we did that. We all grew up and I sort of lost touch with him, too. We did reconnect over Facebook and such over the years but it was like there was something between us neither of us wanted to touch or talk about. Looking back on it now, there’s no way we could have been the only ones to see it. It wasn’t that late at night, and it was over a heavily populated suburb of a major city. The idea of this has always scared me more than any sort of possible abduction scenario. That there were others and we’re all voluntarily suffering a sort of collective amnesia, except in how we’re not. I’ve thought about hypnosis but that scares me, too, plus I’m not sure if I’d trust the results. I was just a kid then and I’m not sure if I could trust the hypnotist. What I do know, again, is that there’s no way it was just the three of us who saw it. We’re talking a huge thing hovering in the sky directly above hundreds of houses just after midnight on a summer weekend night. But nothing on the news, nothing in the paper, nothing on TV, no words spoken about it again ever by anyone….
Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Whew.”
2. The electronics in my car started to go haywire. The radio was randomly changing stations while the volume kept going up and down.
“I can’t say for sure what happened to me that night, but here is what I know…
I was driving home for the weekend from school at Indiana University. It takes me about two hours to get home, and I left Bloomington around 10:00 PM. At exactly 10:53 I am on a rural stretch of the two-lane highway I take home, and I notice what appeared to be flashing lights behind me. I thought, ‘great, I’m getting pulled over,’ so I turned onto the next country road about a quarter mile from where I noticed the lights. As the car came to a stop and I started to open my glove box to get out my registration and proof of insurance, the lights suddenly disappeared, and no car drove past.
Now here is where the story takes a turn for the weird, and I am sure you guys will think I’m just making it all up because it really does seem like something straight out of a typical movie or story. The electronics in my car started to go haywire. The radio was randomly changing stations while the volume kept going up and down while the dome light and headlights start to flicker and turn off and back on. This was at 10:56 PM. I start thinking to myself that my battery must be failing, or else I have a short somewhere in the electric system of my car…so I lean down to pop the hood so I can take a look at the battery, and that is the last thing I remember doing. The next thing I know, I open my eyes and see nothing but the night sky full of bright stars—it was a cold night and it seemed like I had never seen stars that bright in my life. I sat up and looked around, and I saw absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. I was in the middle of a field, surrounded by corn stalks left over from the recent harvest. As I started to come to my senses I started to freak out. Where am I? Why the fuck am I asleep in the middle of a field? Where the fuck is my car? I got up and started walking toward the distant headlights I could see from a road about half a mile away.
When I got to the nearest intersection I looked at the signs which read 350N and 50W. I was half a mile away from my car which was just right off the main road. I started walking toward the headlights I could see on the main road. I can’t say how long it took me to walk the half mile but it couldn’t have been more than 10 or 15 minutes. When I arrived at my car all the lights were out—my battery had died, which struck me as odd because I couldn’t have been gone for that long. I looked at my phone which was sitting on the passenger seat, and the time was 2:17 AM. Over three hours had passed since I turned off onto the side road for the flashing lights behind me. I remember sitting in my car completely dumbfounded, wondering what the hell had just happened to me. After about half an hour of just sitting there I remembered that my battery was dead; so I got on the phone and called AAA to come out and give me a jump. It took about an hour for them to get out to me since I was a good distance away from the nearest town; during which time I just sat in silence, running through the possible scenarios in my head concerning what had just happened. To this day, I couldn’t tell you what really happened to me that night. All I know is I can’t think of any plausible explanation as to why I woke up over half a mile away from my car in the middle of a corn field more than three hours after I had stopped. I have only shared this story with one other person—my uncle. I am sure people would either look at me like I’m crazy or they would call bullshit on the whole story. And I can’t blame them…if somebody came to me with a story like that, that so closely mirrors the stereotypical encounter story, I probably wouldn’t believe them, either.”
3. The red light is so bright it floods the car in a deep scarlet hue.
“Edray, WV. One night few years back my friend (who is driving) and I were taking his girlfriend home when he decided to take the ‘long way home.’ As we are driving along this fairly deserted back road I began to zone out and I stare at this blinking red light off in the distance and casually think to myself, ‘I wonder when they built a cell phone tower all the way out here.’ When suddenly it blinks and is dramatically closer than it was just a moment earlier, at this point my friend points it out and stops in the road. It blinks once more and is directly in front and over top of us, the red light is so bright it floods the car in a deep scarlet hue. I lean forward so that I can see directly into the light, in that brief moment I feel a flood of negative emotions the closest description I can offer is to that of being naked under a giant microscope and having every pore examined thoroughly. I then look away from the light to my friend and ask him to drive; he barely responds, apparently in a similar state. Then he snaps out of it and starts driving. As we get a little ways down the road I notice the red light isn’t fading and the interior of the car is still clearly lit by it. I look out the window and to my horror the light is following us and does so for approximately one or two miles. The light unexpectedly veers off to the left and comes down to ground level in a patch of trees adjacent to the road. My friend stops the car again and continues to stare at it and abruptly declares he is going to get out and look it like he is in some sort of trance. He opens the door and I grab his arm and tell him if he does I will get in the driver seat and leave him, that we had to leave that instant. He looks at me and seems to come to and punches the gas so hard the tires lose traction and spin. The light remained stationary as we rode away, but I’ve never looked at the night sky the same.”
4. Right before the lights disappeared, they accelerated at lightning-fast speed into the darkness. We all went home terrified of what we saw.
“Back in the spring of 1997 a group of us neighborhood kids were looking up at the night sky observing the Hale-Bopp comet. I grew up hours from any major city, so the view was pretty clear. After while we started to notice a red and a white dot circling around each other making sudden movements in every direction. Like no aircraft I have ever seen or have ever seen since. At a certain point, they merged into one craft then shot out three smaller crafts. Although we couldn’t tell whether it was a craft because they just appeared to be balls of light. This went on for a couple hours. Right before the lights disappeared, they accelerated at lightning-fast speed into the darkness. We all went home terrified of what we saw.
The next day on the front page of our small home town paper it said it received several calls, the explanation they gave was that the local airport was testing aircraft. I’m sure how much I believe that story because of what I saw. To this day whenever I see my friends that were there that night we’ll sometimes talk about it. None of us can be sure what were saw but to this day none of us have ever seen anything like it.”
5. It was cruising the street at 3 MPH. Just gliding over the road….I watched it for maybe 20 seconds.
“1997 Colorado Springs, CO. I was 8 years old, playing in the sand volleyball court at the park down the street from my house. I was engrossed in my activity—burying my collection of Happy Meal toys in the sand, and then digging them back out, repeat. I was looking down but decided suddenly that I needed to look up because the world around me had lost all sound.
There was no longer any ambient noise. No traffic noise from the busy streets just a block over. No more dogs barking. No more birds chirping.
I looked at the street that bordered the park, and that is when I saw it.
It looked like a stealth bomber turned sideways (nose leading, one wing down toward the road and the other pointed up at the sky). Completely shiny-black in color, as tall as a house, shaped like an arrowhead. It was cruising the street at 3 MPH. Just gliding over the road….I watched it for maybe 20 seconds. As soon as it had passed behind some two-story houses and out of my sight—I got my hearing back full force.
I ran home with my piss-soaked pants and never spoke a word of it to anybody.
Here is a quick sketch I made, in all of my talented glory. I only lived in CO Springs in 1997. I lived on Don Juan Court, so I guess the park I was playing in was called ‘Franklin Park.’ Immediately after, I moved back to Phoenix just in time for the Phoenix Lights!!!”
6. What made it SUPER strange was its shape and lack of movement. It was orb-esque and stood stagnant for about a solid three minutes before moving at a SNAIL’S PACE to the west.
“2010, Los Angeles, CA. I was cleaning up around my apartment when I noticed my kitchen lamp swinging and my building rocking. Obviously, earthquake. It lasted for a bit and I called my friend to make sure she was OK. As we were chatting, I was standing out on my balcony which overlooks Runyon Canyon, a popular hiking trail. I suddenly noticed this object hovering high in between the mountains.
It was way too high to be a helicopter and too small and low to be a plane. What made it SUPER strange was its shape and lack of movement. It was orb-esque and stood stagnant for about a solid three minutes before moving at a SNAIL’S PACE to the west. I’m talking slower than any aircraft, blimp, kite, whatever, that I’ve ever seen. It also seemed to reflect off the sun, but only at some angles.
I grabbed my crappy digital camera and tried to capture it as best I could. After moving toward the left and then once again staying completely still, it immediately darted at what seemed like an impossible speed in the opposite direction upwards and disappeared.
Plain old man made, government, or other, it was one of the weirdest/best sightings I’ve ever experienced, especially since it was in broad daylight!”
7. It didn’t really move, but it bobbed in the sky, kind of bouncing up and down. Then, like a candle or something, it fizzled out.
“Back when I was an undergrad I had a couple buddies who were big stargazers. One of them lived in a remote part of Eastern WA where you could see everything clearly away from the light pollution. He invited me and another friend to visit his family for Thanksgiving one year and we said yes.
One night we went out into a field of knee-high grass and were looking up at the sky. It was really neat and we saw a bunch of shooting stars. My friend suddenly pointed to a bright light in the sky and asked what it was. My other friend, the one interested in astronomy, didn’t know. It looked kind of like a planet, but evidently there shouldn’t have been any visible planets that night (I don’t know enough about stars to know if this is true, so please don’t flame me. My friend was positive it wasn’t a planet though). It didn’t really move, but it bobbed in the sky, kind of bouncing up and down. Then, like a candle or something, it fizzled out. It literally looked like it burned up. That would have been weird by itself, but that wasn’t the weirdest part.
We sort of thought nothing of it and were actually joking about seeing a UFO, when we came across a guy. In the middle of a field. I still have no idea how he got there since we could see pretty far in all directions and would have noticed him walking around. He was youngish, pretty much our age. He wasn’t wearing any shoes or a shirt and, as far as I could tell, was only wearing jeans. He was sitting curled up, with his arms wrapped around his knees, and shivering. Keep in mind it was the end of November so no one would ever go out without a shirt, much less a jacket. We were scared to approach him so we asked from afar if he was OK. He sort of stared at us blankly and said he was fine. He didn’t sound drunk, but you could hear in his voice that he was cold. Eventually we went over to him and asked how he got there. He said he didn’t want to talk about it and that he needed to go to the hospital. My friend called 911 and some cops showed up with an ambo at a nearby gas station we all walked to. I let him borrow my coat while we waited. He didn’t really say anything except he asked for our names and what we were doing. He also asked my friend about a couple constellations.
The cops asked us a few questions and paramedics took the dude away. I let him keep my jacket.
My friend told the story to his family the next morning and I remember I had forgotten all about the light. He made that connection, though. His family thought it was spooky but figured we’d just had a run-in with a junkie.”
8. I see this fucking bright rounded object (UFO) hovering about 600 feet right above me. I just froze there.
“One night I go down to the kitchen to drink water (at about 4 AM) and I hear this weird, kind of low-pitched buzzing sound coming from outside. I go out to the backyard and shit you not, I see this fucking bright rounded object (UFO) hovering about 600 feet right above me. I just froze there. I almost felt like I was paralyzed for a moment. I watched it ascend higher into the air and take off at an incredible speed and disappear into the wintry clouds. That night I had a dream that I was abducted. Now when I think about it, I wonder if the dream was real but was purposely made to seem like a dream? I obviously don’t know for sure but fuckin’ scary shit, man!”
9. I look up and there’s a metallic object crossing over the field and moving fast.
“I was an air traffic controller (tower) in the Air Force and one morning, I think it was 1972, and I was the crew chief on duty on a midnight shift along with one other controller. It was daybreak and almost time for shift change, when I look up and there’s a metallic object crossing over the field (Randolph AFB, TX) and moving fast. I couldn’t make out what it was, but I knew for sure it wasn’t an aircraft. I called down to radar and asked if they had anything on their scope, and they replied ‘no.’ The other person who was working with me was sleeping on the floor since it was slow (no traffic at all). All these years later I still wonder what it was, but it raised the hair on the back of my neck when I was watching it.”
10. I felt nothing but love for whatever was out there.
“Two years ago I was walking my old dog (bless his soul) on a clear August night in northern Massachusetts. Where I live along the Atlantic we do not get much light pollution and on a good night like this one it’s possible to see the faintest stars with only your eyes. I took a break from walking for a minute to light up a cigarette. By some lucky chance, I happened to look into the sky just at the right time to see two very tiny faint objects. They were very distant, but it appeared that they were within the Earth’s upper atmosphere. Typically, I see satellites and space junk all of the time. What distinguishes something as a satellite or space junk is the linear motion across the sky. These two objects, however, were not moving in any kind of linear fashion. They were weaving, moving away from each other, then closer again. They stopped and hovered at one point, and then began moving again.
What happened afterward I honestly cannot recall. I must have just gotten up and gone back inside. I remember a feeling of joy upon seeing them, not fear, and also a sense of connection—that there are others out there experiencing the happiness and suffering that we humans endure from day to day. I’m a truth-seeker and a lover, forever in search of true love. And I tell you, I felt nothing but love for whatever was out there.
I don’t tell many people this story because I don’t like explaining myself to anyone, but I do believe that it’s a story worth taking seriously.”
11. It was a boomerang-shaped object, about as big as a private plane, moving silently and smoothly.
“I was out on my balcony at about 11-1 at night having a cigarette; I don’t remember the exact time. It was April of 2012. I live in Las Vegas but my balcony faces away from the lights and Strip. I was stargazing for a bit when I noticed something odd, something was moving. A star I had been looking at suddenly disappeared, as if something moved in front of it. It was a boomerang-shaped object, about as big as a private plane, moving silently and smoothly. No noise at all, no lights; it wasn’t pitch-black, either. Almost a really dark purple/blue, the color the night sky is. Seemed like it was trying to blend in. It was also very low, maybe only 100-150 feet up. Like if you were riding on top and I yelled something to you, you could hear me. That close. I watched as it silently glided out if my view. I looked online a few days later and apparently only one other person saw it. Must have been stealthy flying that low in this big of a city and only two people saw it. Here’s a link to what I found of someone else that saw it.
That picture doesn’t look accurate, though; it looked more like this.”
12. Two large glowing balls appear. Then there is another one to the right.
“I was 12 at the time and my family has a camp on the Tangipahoa River in Louisiana. The only way you can get to it is by boat. If you have ever the area has been on TV recently with shows like Ax Men and Swamp People.
So it was just my uncle, my cousin, and myself and we were heading back to the boat launch on a Sunday night. Now the boat we were in didn’t have any working lights. So to see where we were going my uncle would occasionally shoot a flare (he was kinda crazy and has since passed). We quickly ran out of the flares you shoot as it is around a two-hour boat ride back to the landing. So I ended up on the front of the boat holding a regular flare as we were now on a much narrower stretch of river.
When to the left in swamp two large glowing balls appear. Then there is another one to the right. I am just trying to keep this flare from burning me, and little cousin is freaking out. After around 10 minutes of them navigating through the swamp they formed a triangle above us on the river. It is hard to gauge how far up they were, but it was very visible.
They continued to follow us for the rest of the journey back to the landing and as soon as we arrived they disappeared. This all happened around 18 years ago but it is something I will never forget. I don’t talk about this stuff really and usually just keep it to myself. I have had one other encounter.
Map of area with some labels.”
13. I can only describe it as a disco ball, because that’s exactly what it looked like.
“I wish I could tell you I have proof (I don’t), but I can tell you this really happened.
I was living out in the country with my girlfriend’s family when I was 19 in Eastern Canada. She went out with her friends one night and I was alone in the house with her mom since her father worked nights.
I was upstairs reading a book when the dog, who was tied up outside, started going absolutely nuts. I figured there may have been another dog on the property and maybe they were fighting, so I ran downstairs and threw on my boots to get out there and break it up.
When I flung open the door I got goosebumps immediately. What seemed like every dog for miles around was barking, yelping and howling. I barely had time to think about what the hell was going on when I saw an object floating above the tree line, which was probably about half a mile to a mile away.
I can only describe it as a disco ball, because that’s exactly what it looked like. It was round and about the size of a pencil eraser from that distance. It would float to the left and right, and slightly up and down. It would do this for maybe 10 seconds and then disappear. It would reappear a second later in a different spot.
It did this probably six times—enough that when it disappeared I would start scanning the tree line to see where it would reappear next. It was completely silent. I ducked my head in the door at one point and saw that my girlfriend’s mother was asleep on the couch. I think I even called her name once but she didn’t wake up. I didn’t want to go inside and rouse her for fear of missing it.
The last time the thing disappeared, in the exact spot that it blinked out a teardrop-shaped light from the top of the sky shot straight down and behind the tree line extremely fast.
I stood there for a second trying to figure out if I’d actually seen this or maybe was hallucinating, and almost on cue as if to give me proof that I had seen it, I heard voices and looked to the road and saw that a couple had stopped their car and had been standing on the side of the road watching the very same thing I had been seeing. I didn’t hear actual words, but there was clearly surprise in their voices. I thought about going down to the road to talk to them but it was quite a ways off and I was in my pajamas. Before I really had a chance, they drove away.”
14. When it left, it left VERY fast. And when it left, it lit up the forest.
“October of 2009, my dad calls me and says he wants to go camping for the weekend and that he was leaving right away, this is like 4 or 5 in the afternoon. I agree, he picks me up, and we head out to the Mogollon Rim. It gets dark before we get there and rains a little bit. Very weird vibe, we pass a stranded motorist, and we are usually the type to stop and help but we decided against it.
As we get close to the campsite, I see what I think is a tent with a lantern in it (it is glowing bright yellow/orange) in the distance, a little lower in elevation than we were. As we keep driving, it doesn’t seem to get any closer until it randomly moves and gets bigger. That’s when we realize it isn’t a tent. I tell him to stop the car; he does and shuts off the lights. The light slowly gets bigger and kind of twists and slowly moves from left to right. Then after about two to five minutes, it gets a little smaller, then shoots straight out to 12 o’clock until it wasn’t visible anymore. When it left, it left VERY fast. And when it left, it lit up the forest. That’s when I realized we were looking over the edge of the rim.
We both agreed that we didn’t know what the fuck it was, and it was probably an alien. Still shook up, we got to our destination and set up camp, had a great weekend.”
15. We just stood there, speechless. And then it disappeared. But we both saw it, clear as day.
“I was recently out of college, walking with a boyfriend along the Potomac in Great Falls (Maryland side, if it matters), it wasn’t dusk, but almost. Still a clear sky, spring or summer, beautiful evening, your quintessential gloaming, very romantic, etc. and then all of sudden, boom, we were looking at an enormous disc floating in the sky right in front of us. Over the river, a 100 percent classic flying saucer, lights, a whizzing sort of motion, the whole nine yards. We just stood there, speechless. And then it disappeared. But we both saw it, clear as day. And then we looked at each other, said our generation’s version of WTF?, and went and had dinner. And never, ever talked about it again. I don’t know why; it was almost too strange to talk about, I guess. Maybe we both felt kind of crazy saying it out loud. So of course eventually we broke up, went our separate ways, AND THEN…
Many many years later, we met up again in NY, both older, with careers, families, lives; we had a drink. We were walking around and all of a sudden, he said, ‘So, do you remember that night on the river? The flying saucer?’ And I nodded, said, ‘Yes, I do.’ Then he said, ‘OK. I just wanted to know if you remembered it too, if it really happened. Sometimes I think I must have imagined it.’
And again, that was it. Went and had a cider, chatted, parted. This incredibly weird shared experience that we obviously both have thought about over the years, but somehow still could only minimally acknowledge, as if we were both somehow tongue-tied. It’s still almost the strangest part about the whole thing.”
16. There were orange dots taking up my entire field of vision.
“Until I had my own UFO experience, I was one of the biggest naysayers around.
2011, sometime in November in Los Angeles…
I was at a friend’s kickback in Beverlywood and stepped away from the party to smoke a cigarette. My car was parked on the same side as the house we were chilling at, so I walked over to the driver’s side and leaned against the door and lit up that bad boy. As I smoked my cigarette, I noticed orange dots in the sky, above the tree line (8-10 feet). At first, I thought my eyes were messing with me. I closed my eyes for a few seconds to rest them, then took another gander and the orange dots were still there. Upon further squinting at the night sky, I realized there were orange dots taking up my entire field of vision. I figured my eyes were messed-up and I needed glasses (I have 20/18 vision, so not really the case).
Then all the dots started moving to my right. Very slowly, but there was movement. I used the trees, telephone poles…anything I could use as a reference point. As this enormous connect the dot structure was moving, I noticed a spherical indentation toward the bottom. This intrigued me. This sphere made me think, holy shit—could this be a UFO? I started to walk in the direction it was moving, fumbling for my phone. The object picked up speed at an INCREDIBLE rate, I mean…I think I saw it go ‘warp’ speed. At any rate, this object larger than my field of vision was stationary for a cool minute or two then simply vanished into the distance in no less than five seconds once it picked up velocity.”
17. A triangle-shaped flying vehicle with three BIG lights appeared. It literally illuminated the WHOLE road…
“It was the summer of 2007 and I was at my usual summer retreat in the village. There were a lot of young people there during the summer and we were always walking on foot on the road to the neighborhood village (4 KM away) for a night of drinking and fun.
I don’t usually believe in stories like this, but one of these nights we were returning from the neighborhood village it was around 1 am and it was PITCH-dark there since there are no lights, no people, no nothing. We were around 20 people coming back on foot and all of a sudden from a distance of around 200-300 meters away from the mountain a triangle-shaped flying vehicle with three BIG lights appeared. It literally illuminated the WHOLE road with light as bright as daylight…we were all stunned and stopped and as soon as we started moving it moved away with a speed that’s unnatural to any other vehicle known to me and disappeared in a matter of one or two seconds.
Although there were some drunk people in our group that time we all saw it even the sober ones and we will never forget what happened that night.”